Timeline of Key Dates in the 1970s: Body Culture and the Political Context
- 1969- 1977 While hope remained strong that the promise of the Civil Rights Movement would be fulfilled, there were signs that a social justice agenda was under threat: beginning with the FBI infiltrating the Black Panther Party and killing the charismatic leader of the Chicago Black Panthers Fred Hampton and another Panther Mark Clark on Dec. 4, 1969; there follows a nearly decade-long investigation and lawsuit by attorneys for the families of the slain Panthers to uncover the true story of the raid that killed these leaders.
- Throughout the decade: the country struggles with both inflation and a stagnant economy ("stagflation"); gasoline shortages; unemployment; and loss of manufacturing jobs
- 1971 First edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women. The Boston Women's Health Book Collective.
- 1971 Ms. magazine launches as a sample insert in New York Magazine
- 1972 Title IX goes into effect, banning discrimination against women by all educational institutions that receive federal funding. Effect: equal funding for women's and men's sports.
- 1973 Roe v. Wade: Supreme Court rules that women's right to privacy permits abortion
- 1973 "The Battle of the Sexes": tennis star Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in tennis match at the Houston Astrodome
- 1973 Michael Murphy establishes the Esalen Sports Center in Big Sur, California, dedicated to advancing the Human Potential Movement
- 1975 Vietnam War ends
- 1977 Jim Fixx publishes The Complete Book of Running
- Body work, spiritual groups, and encounter groups dominate the Human Potential Movement in California: Feldenkrais, Rolfing, the Alexander Technique, Transcendental Meditation, tai chi, and many other forms of bodywork and spirituality
- COMMONALITIES WITHIN BODY CULTURE: " . . . a rediscovery, renaissance, resurrection of the body as central, integral, valued in one's unified being and becoming" (Stratton F. Caldwell, "The Human Potential Movement: Forms of Body/Movement/Nonverbal Experiencing," paper presentation. 1975. Internet Archive).